Order of MANS

NOTE: The author was involved with Pangratios Vrionis (AKA Metropolitan Pangratios of the Archdiocese of Vasiloupolis, Queens, New York or Demetrios Vrionis). In 1968 Father Vrionis was a GOA priest in Pennsylvania. He was apparently suspended and defrocked for “disobedience,” and at the same time he was also charged with rape of two teen-aged boys by Dauphin county, Pennsylvania. After serving his sentence, Vrionis founded a children’s school and his own Orthodox Jurisdiction in Queens, New York (the Archdiocese of Vasilupolis).Vrionis is most widely known for his leadership role in the Holy Order of MANS. In the 1980s Vrionis accepted this new-age group into his jurisdiction, whereupon they changed their name to Christ the Saviour Brotherhood. Benedict Greene was in the Archdiocese of Vasilupolis when the Holy Order of MANS joined them and was responsible for training many of their leaders in the Orthodox tradition along with Vrionis.In 1968, Vrionis pled guilty to two counts of sodomy and two counts of corrupting the morals of a minor. He was sentenced to probation. (See: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Vrionis, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, County of Dauphin, Case Numbers 1378 and 1377).http://www.pokrov.org/wp-content/uploads/Vrionis-Criminal-RecordsX.pdfhttp://www.pokrov.org/?s=pangratios&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

“Bishop” Pangratios Vrionis of Queens, NY.

The Testimony:
In my early 30s, I met my husband, Alex. He was an Eastern Orthodox priest, “on leave” after a divorce. I had never heard of Orthodox Christianity before, but I liked what I heard: A mystical or symbolic interpretation of scripture; no Substitutionary Atonement; no literal burning hell, and open to the possibility of people of other religions entering heaven. It seemed to be all the good stuff minus the bad stuff, and the fact that it was the “original church” in history gave it a lot of credibility.

Alex also seemed like the right kind of Christian for me. Raised in a communal atmosphere in Berkely, he was still a hippie with hair down to his waist, a love for film and rock n’ roll, and liberal political views. He was a recovering drug addict who credited God for his sobriety, and had made his way out of a shockingly violent childhood – but he had become a pastoral counselor. He was a gentle father to his 5-year-old son, and was more intelligent than anyone I had ever met. He was deeply involved in peace issues, and very inclusive as to who would go to heaven.

I recognized a gift from God when I saw one.

Christian Kabbalah Timeline

But I didn’t know enough about Orthodoxy to see the red flags. He’d been ordained in a non-canonical “independent” Orthodox church in Queens that mixed Kabballah and Theosophy in with its Orthodox theology. (I found out many years later that the Bishop who had founded it – and who Alex practically worshipped – had served time twice for embezzlement and once for mail fraud).

We were engaged and moved in together a month after we met. He resisted birth control on the grounds that “I trust God about things like that.” He also trusted God so much he didn’t wear a seatbelt, and was staunchly opposed to any sort of significant savings, calling a nest egg “greedy and materialistic” and reminding me of the sparrows. He was an artist and didn’t have a “real” job, but promised to get one before we were married. He finally did get a job in IT, and our two jobs helped us to maintain a roof over our heads.

Alex was a study in contradictions. He read the Bible every day, taking copious notes. Our apartment was covered with iconography and he self-published several books on Orthodoxy. He praised God constantly, never taking praise for himself but attributing all to God. To this day I have no doubt that he really DID believe; he wasn’t faking it. But once we returned from our wedding in Queens, more problems came up.

Now that he was married, he was reinstated to the priesthood. Suddenly I was a priest’s wife, something I hadn’t anticipated. About the same time he came down with a severe illness that kept him bedridden for two weeks, so he lost his job in IT. He was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but refused to try to get disability because he wanted to serve as a (volunteer) priest for a small congregation and he knew that would interfere with getting the benefit. We were back to my small salary, and I was getting scared.

His 5-year-old son was illegitimate, having been conceived during the process of his divorce. Just after our wedding, a 2-year-old illegitimate son popped up; we had to go to court to allow his stepfather to adopt him. I wept uncontrollably during the hearing; Alex seemed to feel nothing. I asked him, “How many more kids are out there?” He shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Probably several.”

He had already informed me that I was fourth on his priority list, after God, the Church, and his son. This was true. Once, when my stepson slammed the door and a large wooden icon fell and cracked me on the head, I swore, and he flew into a rage because I’d sworn in front of the icon. He kissed it – the icon, not my head.

We became the leaders of a congregation, but with a caveat – no one could know of his former divorce or his son’s illegitimacy. So began a life of lies where I had to subtly pretend that my stepson was my own (very difficult to do when the church women ask you about his birth or your child’s earliest years), and my stepson had to stay with the program and not mention his real mom or half-sister. He’s 22 now, and I cry as I write this. What we did to him was so sick, so unfathomable, that I will never, ever forgive myself.

I began to feel more and more isolated, especially since the two congregations we eventually led were immigrants, most of whom did not speak English. I didn’t have anyone to confess my lies to.

As it turned out, two of his exes had attempted or committed suicide. I never thought about the statistics of that – Alex explained they were both “crazy.” But as time went on, he displayed more and more of his temper. He would fly into unbelievable rages – often I didn’t know what he was upset about – and scream and swear at me. He was a very large man, and I would sit on the floor as he towered over me, yelled so the neighbors could hear (they told me!), hands in fists, veins poking out of his neck. Co-workers complained to my HR department about the times he dropped me off at work, screaming hysterically at me.

These weren’t “arguments” because I was afraid to reciprocate. Instead, I would go into another room and burn myself. I’d never self-harmed before, but I had nowhere to put my emotions.

He never actually “hit” me, although he did cause two situations which left me bruised. Anyway, the yelling was worse, because for days afterward, I was physically sore as if he had. But unlike most abusive men, he never once said “I’m sorry.” He may have asked God for forgiveness, but not me.

For some years, I believed I was happy – because I felt every incident was isolated and would never recur. Our family did, in fact, have wonderful times together, but it was like taking a walk though a lovely meadow and having to avoid the landmines. Later I became unhappy, but chose to bear my burden because I didn’t want to break up the church. He had threatened me several times with a “Biblical marriage” in which he would make all decisions and I would submit, but it was that way anyway.

Yet the idea of divorce was completely foreign to me. God had brought me this man and I was going to make it work somehow. When I was feeling down he sent me to a weekend retreat at a monastery nearby with a sweet and kind bishop we both loved. This bishop was later defrocked for sexual assault.

Things finally came to a head when my company declared bankruptcy and it looked like I would be laid off shortly. I began to hint that he might look into getting another part-time job (he was working for pay one day a week as a hospital chaplain). He exploded that he couldn’t do that and the church, and the church was his priority. He screamed at me to get a job at McDonald’s, when I was already working 50 to 60 hours a week. “YOU DON’T TRUST GOD,” he shrieked.

I began to get sicker and sicker, mentally and physically. Between jaw problems and anxiety, I lost almost 30 pounds and was constantly depressed and anxious. The doctors simply put me on more and more medication. But the more depressed I got, the more angry Alex got, calling me a “selfish bitch.” He would scream and swear at me the whole way to church, then get out of the car and become “The Gentle Priest.” It was as if he was two people. Church members often told me how fortunate I was to be married to such a Godly man.

Like the Ingrid Bergman character in “Gaslight,” my husband kept trying to convince me that I was crazy, and I came to believe it. He made me flush my meds down the toilet because I was “depending on medication instead of God,” throwing me into SSRI withdrawal. At one point he attempted to exorcise the demons out of me. One minute I was praising God, a moment later the fears came back again. “You TOOK the demons back,” he screamed. “You WANT to be sick.”

By that time I was in a semi-psychotic state. And one day I was greatly relieved and calmed to hear God’s voice say, “You can come home.” I had taken to sleeping on the floor in front of the altar, and when Alex came in I happily informed him. He flew into a rage. “What will that do to the CHURCH? You will go to HELL if you do this. But if it’s what you want, fine. What should I get you – a gun or a rope!?”

The next morning I made a serious attempt – not a gesture, not to get attention. I was 100% positive that I would die and life would be better for everyone. I wrote a suicide note to the church, telling them what a good man my husband was and why they should stay in his congregation. It was all my fault, I said. Blame me.

Somehow, I survived. One doctor said he had never had a patient survive what I had done. They all expected me to be happy that I was alive. I was not. I was supposed to stay in the ward for two weeks. Alex called two days after, demanding I come home, and telling me what to say to the doctors in order to get out. It worked.

The next three years were more of the same, except that now when we argued he would pull the suicide card. And his violent behavior kept escalating. Out of curiosity I wrote the city for his police records and discovered that right about the time he’d met me, he’d been arrested and gone to court for hitting his mother.

To be 100% fair, it was two Orthodox friends (from another church) and an Evangelical counselor who told me I HAD to leave. But I was still brainwashed with my own personal religion. I kept promising them things would get better. They HAD to. I was doing this for God.

One night in our 16th year, I came home late from work, as I was dealing with my most time-consuming project of the year. He was waiting for me. When I came in, he said, “So, I suppose you were out screwing someone else.” There was something new in his eyes, something I’d never seen before. The next morning I got up, went to work and never came home.

Ironically, I still have to support him financially after the divorce. And if the State has a problem with the checks, which it sometimes does, he’s very quick to email me and demand the money (what happened to the sparrows?). MY home has been foreclosed, I’ve lost half my savings, I’ve declared bankruptcy and I have no idea where my stepson is. My father died about the same time. I was diagnosed with PTSD from the abuse. I had lost everything. Everything. I felt like a fool. Still do.

Over the next six months or so, the “feeling” I had, which I had called God, faded and faded. I knew God was gone completely when my father died. I was holding his hand as he passed away, and I felt noting – no compulsion to pray, no concerns about whether he’d gone to heaven or hell, no feeling that his spirit was anywhere at all. The chaplain came by and asked if he could be of any assistance. I said no – unthinkable in the past.

I never, never dreamed I would stop believing in God. For most of my life, even while I wrestled with dogma, God was the one thing I believed to be true. “I believe God exists because I exist,” I would say. I prayed every night before bed and throughout the day as well.

But I can’t imagine the opportunities I missed, the hell I endured, in his name. If there is a god who loves me, he has a funny way of showing it. People will say “I never really believed,” but if I didn’t, why would I have gone through all of that? I defy anyone to go through what I’ve been through and not recognize that God is either evil or a myth.

We’re on our own, and I wish I had known that 30 years ago. I truly feel I wasted my entire life in God’s name.NOTE: Amethyst7 “was married to an Orthodox pastor for 16 years, after having been disillusioned by every other form of Christianity. For her complete extimony from Orthodoxy (and religion itself), read: